Book Award Travel

With the changes to the BA miles program and launch of Avios miles, there are now some great possibilities to redeem miles for short trips with BA to / from the UK.

Closer destinations have been grouped into several zones, with fixed Avios points required to book flights to  each. In addition, BA has introduced an option where you pay a fixed price in addition to the Avios points and they then pay the required  taxes and charges. This is fixed for an economy award ticket at £27 for a return trip, and with taxes and charges on a normal purchased european ticket often reaching £100, this is a fantastic deal.

As an extra bonus, they will also allow you to include connecting flights to / from any uk domestic airport they serve, meaning this really is a very effective way for anyone in the uk to make affordable short trips to europe. A real great addition to the new Avios scheme from BA!

The following  European destinations can be reached for just 9000 Avios return:

Amsterdam, Basle, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt,  Geneva, Genoa, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Innsbruck, Jersey, Luxembourg, Lyon, Marseille, Milan, Munich, Nice, Paris, Prague, Salzburg, Stuttgart, Toulouse, Turin, Zurich

And the following slightly further cities for only 15000 Avios return:

Algiers, Barcelona, Bari, Belgrade, Bologna, Budapest, Cagliari, Dubrovnik, Faro, Gibraltar, Helsinki, Ibiza, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, Naples, Oslo, Palma, Pisa, Rome, Stockholm, Tunis, Venice, Verona, Vienna, Warsaw

If you are short of miles, they also allow an option to pay 50% in miles and 50% in cash, which also represents a very affordable way and still makes tickets much less expensive for Avios collectors than the purchase of normal fare tickets in most cases.

We really advise Avios collectors to look at this, as it presents some great value travel options!

Following the acquisition of BMI by BA / International Airlines Group, there will be some major changes coming up to the BMI mileage program, Diamond Club.

It remains to be confirmed what the new company and loyalty program will look like, but the likelihood is we will see miles being honored but transferred to the BA Avios scheme.

The BMI diamond club has always been one of the most generous mileage programs under which to earn and redeem miles, with lower mileage requirements than many competitors and good options for combining multiple airlines, including stopovers etc.

The transfer to Avios will likely be a devaluation of the real value of the miles you have, and critically will now be redeemable on BA / Oneworld airlines rather than Star Alliance.

If you have upcoming travel plans and want to get better value from your miles, and especially if you prefer or need to use Star Alliance airlines for your travel, now would be a good time to make bookings with these miles.

Additionally, in the final months of the program BMI are running some good promotions to pick up extra miles on certain routes, and offering a great 20% bonus if you need to purchase additional miles to reach what you need for an award.

BA and Iberia have released full details of their new mileage scheme “Avios”.

All previous BA miles are converted into Avios at a 1:1 rate.  Many areas of the scheme remain unchanged, with some great new features including:

– In many cases mileage rates have decreased, particularly for shorter european trips out of the UK base.

– There are also some great new rates for redeeming trips on other oneworld carriers, including Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Japan Airlines and American Airlines., with much lower rates than other carriers offer.

– A new proposal to incorporate departure taxes, UK air passenger duty and fuel surcharges into one fixed, lower, price for some destinations. This is a great improvement as these charges have been creeping up for some time. These only apply for european and closer african destinations from the UK, but bear in mind there are also many other ways to reduce the high UK taxes with flexible routings, contact for suggestions.